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Military notified of wayward flight too late to launch fighters

The U.S. military would have launched fighter
jets to track down an errant Northwest Airlines flight that
overshot the Minneapolis airport if officials had been notified
sooner, a top commander said Thursday as federal authorities
defended the decision to revoke the licenses of the pilots
involved.

Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said he
learned of the incident just four or five minutes before the
Federal Aviation Administration regained contact with the pilots,
who flew 150 miles past their destination. They have said they got
distracted while using their laptops in the cockpit.

Renuart said fighter jets were taxiing to the runway and should
have been airborne, but they were held back when FAA officials told
military commanders they thought they were re-establishing contact
with the flight.

The military's revelations came as Transportation Secretary Ray
LaHood told Congress that the public deserves more professionalism
from pilots.

"You can't have pilots sitting in front of a laptop when
they're supposed to be flying a plane at 30- or 40,000 feet in the
air with over a hundred passengers on board," said LaHood. "That
would be like a bus driver sitting with a laptop going 65 miles an
hour down the road."

The Air Line Pilots Association, meanwhile, sent letters
Thursday to National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah
Hersman and FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt complaining that the
agencies had released details of the incident to the media before
the investigations are complete.

The pilots told safety investigators they lost track of time and
place while using their laptops to work out crew schedules, They
were out of contact with air traffic controllers for 91 minutes.

Cockpit Voice RecorderKevin Wolf/Associated Press

While Renuart would not disclose the precise timetable of
events, he said his staff was aware of the problem for roughly 10
minutes and had just alerted the fighter aircraft before they told
him about Flight 188 - a gap he also said must be corrected.

It appears the FAA had been out of contact with the flight for
at least an hour at that point.

"It is fair to say that it took longer than I would have
liked," said Renuart, adding that Northern Command is doing an
internal review of the incident. He said the incident was an
anomaly but that the delays must be corrected.

As the fighters were heading to the runway, FAA officials told
Northern Command they thought they were getting radio contact back
with the airliner, so the fighters were told to stop. Two to three
minutes later, the FAA said it had contacted the pilots.

"Part of our afterglow of this is - launch the airplanes, and
then we'll sort it out later," Renuart said, responding to
questions during a talk at the Center for National Policy.

U.S. Northern Command was created in the aftermath of the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks, and it is linked to the North American Aerospace
Defense Command. Fighter jets are routinely launched in response to
similar incidents of suspicious aircraft activity.

"This is a good wake-up call for us," said Renuart. "I think
in some cases we had become comfortable with the level of activity.
We have to remember that these things occur with no notice. We have
to be agile and responsive."

Babbitt also acknowledged that air traffic controllers didn't
notify the military as quickly as they should have.

The pilots union, whose members include the flight's two pilots,
said the pilots may be reluctant to talk to investigators or
participate in voluntary safety programs if they believe their
conversations will be released publicly.

"The release of information, even factually accurate
information, before the investigatory process is permitted to work
allows it to become sensationalized by the news media and distracts
from the goal of accident investigation," John Prater, the pilots
union president, said in a statement.

On Monday, NTSB released a description of the pilots' accounts
of what had occurred during flight. On Tuesday, the FAA announced
it was revoking their licenses and released letters to the pilots
chastising them for their behavior.

Several senators complained Thursday about how long it took the
FAA to notify the military, and they asked Hersman to include that
in the NTSB investigation.

Hersman expressed reluctance to expand the board's investigation
beyond the safety issues, saying that may be an issue for the FAA
to review.
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